The Ministry of a Transfigured Church

“And when the day of Pentecost was come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them tongues parting asunder, like as of fire: and it sat upon each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.... And when this sound was heard, the multitude came together!” — Acts ii. 1-4, 6.

The wonder inside the Church aroused inquisitive interest without. There came to the Church an exceptional and plentiful endowment, and, as by the constraint of a mystic gravitation, the outside crowd began to move, like the waters swayed by the moon. The crowd may have moved towards the Church in the temper of a flippant curiosity, or in the spirit of unfriendly revolt, or in the solemn mood of appropriating awe. Whatever may have been the constraint, the waters were no longer stagnant, the masses were no longer heedless and apathetic; the heedlessness was broken up, interest was begotten, and the multitude came together.”

Is the modern Church the centre of similar interest and wonder? Is there any awed and mesmeric rumour breathing through the streets, stirring the indifferent heart into eager questionings? The modern Church claims immediate kinship and direct and vital lineage with that primitive fellowship in the upper room. Does she manifest the power of the early Church? Does she reveal the same magnetic influence and constraint?

I know that ‘^ the Kingdom of God cometh not with observation.” And so it is with the Spring. The Spring ^’ cometh not with observation,” but you speedily have tokens that she is here. She can hide her coming behind March squalls, and she can step upon our shores in the rough attire of a blustering and tempestuous day; but even though her coming may be without observation, her presence cannot be hid. And even so it is with the Kingdom: she may make no noisy and ostentatious display of her coming, but the sleeping seeds feel her approach, and the valley of bones experiences an awaking thrill, and ‘^ there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.” I think, therefore, that we are justified in seriously inquiring as to the ‘’ resurrection power “of our Churches, the measure of their quickening influence, their net result in reaching and stirring and consecrating the energies of a community. How do they stand in the judgment? Is the Pentecostal morning repeated, and is the gracious miracle the talk of the town? Does the multitude come together, ‘^ greatly wondering “?

Carry the inquisition to the regular and frequent fellowship of the Church. So many times a week her members gather together in the upper room. What happens in the hallowed shrine? Are we held in solemn and enriching amazement at the awful doings? And when we come forth again, is there about us a mysterious impressiveness which arrests the multitude, and which sends abroad a spirit of questioning like a healthy contagion? Can we honestly say that by our ordinary services the feet of the heedless crowd are stayed, and that the people come together ‘^ greatly wondering “? In answer to all these searching questions I think that even the most optimistic of us will feel obliged to confess that the general tendency is undisturbed, that we do not generate force enough to stop the drift, and that the surrounding multitude remains uninfluenced.

Now, when we consider these unattracted or alienated peoples, we can roughly divide them into three primary classes. First, there are those who never think about us at all. So very remote are the highways of their thought and life that the impulse of the Church is spent before it reaches their mental and moral abode. We can scarcely describe their attitude as one of indifference, because the mood of indifference would imply a negligent sense of our existence, and I can discern no signs of such perception. We contribute no thread to the warp and woof of their daily life. We bring no nutriment to the common meal; we do not even provide a condiment for the feast. Our presence in the city brings neither pleasure nor pang, neither sweet nor bitter, neither irritation nor ease; their souls are not disquieted within them, neither are they lulled into a deeper and more perilous sleep. We are neither irritants nor sedatives; to this particular class we simply do not exist.

And, then, secondly, there are those who have thought about us, and as a result of their thinking have determined to ignore us. For all simple, positive, and progressive purposes we are no longer any good. We are exhausted batteries; we have no longer the power to ring a loud alarm, or to light a new road, or to energise some heavy and burdensome crusade. Our once stern and sacrificial warfare has now become a bloodless and self-indulgent quest. It is not only that the once potent shellcases have been emptied of their explosive content, they have been converted into dinner-gongs! The once brilliant and unconditional ethical ideal has been dimmed and shadowed by worldly compromise. The pure and oxygenated flame of righteous passion has been changed into the fierce but smoky bonfire of sectarian zeal. We are looked upon as engaged in petty and childish controversy, losing ourselves in vague and nebulous phraseology, decking ourselves in vestures and postures as harmless and indifferent as the dresses worn at a fancy ball. That is the estimate formed of us by a vast section of the thinking crowd. You will find it reflected week by week in the labour papers, where we are regarded as straws in some side-bay of a mighty river, riding serenely round and round and round, and we do not even show the drift of the stream, the dominant movement of our age. Our speech and our doings are of interest to the antiquary, but for all serious, practical, forceful, and aspiring life our Churches do not count.

And, thirdly, there are those who think about us, and who are constrained by their thinking into the fiercest and most determined opposition. To these men the Church is not like Bunyan’s Giant Pope, alive but impotent, and “by reason of age, and also of the many shrewd brushes that he met with in his younger days, grown so crazy and stiff in his joints, that he can do little more than sit in his cave’s mouth, grinning at pilgrims as they go by, and biting his nails because he cannot come at them.’’ No, to this class the Church can do more than grin; it can reach and tear, and its ministry is still destructive. Its influence is perverse and perverting. Its very faith is a minister of mental and moral paralysis. Its dominant conceptions befog the common atmosphere, and chill and freeze “the genial currents of the soul.” Its common postures and practices, its defences and aggressions, perpetuate and confirm human alienations and divisions. The Church cannot be ignored; it is not a harmless and picturesque ruin; it is a foul fungus souring the common soil, and for the sake of all sweet and beautiful things its nefarious influence must be destroyed.

This is by no means an exhaustive analysis of the alienated multitude, but it is sufficiently descriptive for my present purpose. In each of these three great primary classes the people stand aloof, indifferent and resentful, and the Church is not endowed with that subduing and triumphant impressiveness which would turn their reverent feet toward herself. Now, how stands it with the Church? Does she seem fitted to strike, and arrest, and silence, and allure the careless or suspicious multitudes? What is there imique and amazing about her? Her Lord has promised her a marvellous distinctiveness. She is to be ‘’ a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing ‘M A glorious Church ‘^: shining amid all the surrounding twilights with the radiance of a splendid noon! “Not having spot “: no defect, no blemish, no impaired function, no diseased limb! ‘^ Or wrinkle “: there shall be no sign of age about her, or any waste; she shall never become an anachronism; she shall always be as young as the present age, ever distinguished by her youthful brow, and by her fresh and almost boisterous optimism! ‘’ Or wrinkle, or any such thing ‘’! Mark the final, holy swagger of it, as though by a contemptuous wave of the hand the Apostle indicates the entire rout of the unclean pests that invade and attack an apostate Church. *’ Or any such thing ‘’! Are these great words of promise in any high degree descriptive of our own Church? Is this our distinctiveness? “Not having spot “: have we no withered hands, no halt, no blind, no lame, no lepers? “Or wrinkle ‘’: are we really distinguished by the invincible and contagious energies of perpetual youth? Does not the holding up of this great ideal throw our basal defects into dark and ugly relief? The pity of it all is just this, that the Church, with all its loud and exuberant professions, is exceedingly like “the world.” There is no clean, clear line of separation. In place of the promised glories we have a tolerable and unexciting dimness; in place of superlative whiteness we have an uninteresting gray; and in place of the spirit of an aggressive youthfulness we have a loitering and time-serving expediency. There would be no diflSculty, if only we had seized upon the fulness of our resources, and had become clothed with the riches of our promised inheritance, in men being able to distinguish, in any general company, the representatives of the Church of the living God. There would be about them the pervasive joy of spiritual emancipation, resting upon all their speech and doings like sunlight on the hills. There would be about them a spiritual spring and buoyancy which would enable them to move amid besetting obstacles with the nimbleness of a hart. Thou hast made my feet like hinds’ feet! ““By my God have I leaped over a wall!” There would be about them the fine serenity which is born of a mighty alliance. And there would be the strong, healthy pulse of a holy and hallowing purpose, beating in constant and forceful persistence. Such characteristics would distinguish any man, and any company, and any Church, and the startled multitude would gather around in questioning curiosity. But the alluring wonder is largely absent from our Church. Men pass from the world into our precincts as insensible of any difference as though they had passed from one side of the street to the other, and not feeling as though they had been transported from the hard, sterile glare of the city thoroughfare into the fascinating beauties of a Devonshire lane. What, then, do we need? We need the return of the wonder, the arresting marvel of a transformed Church, the phenomenon of a miraculous life. I speak not now of the wonders of spasmodic revivals; and, indeed, if I must be

perfectly frank, my confidence in the efficient ministry of these elaborately engineered revivals has greatly waned. I will content myself with the expression of this most sober judgment, that the alienated and careless multitude is not impressed by the machinery and products of our modern revivals. The ordinary mission does not, and cannot, reach the stage at which this particular type of impressiveness becomes operative. The impressiveness does not attach to “decisions,” but to resultant life. The wonder of the world is not excited by the phenomena of the penitent bench, but by what happens at the ordinary working-bench in the subsequent days. The world is not impressed by the calendar statement that at a precise particular moment Winter relinquished her sovereignty to Spring; the real interest is awakened by the irresistible tokens of the transition in garden, hedgerow, and field. It is not the new birth which initially arrests the world, but the new and glorified life. It is not, therefore, by spasmodic revivals, however grace-blessed they may be, that we shall excite the wonder of the multitude, but by the abiding miracle of a God-filled and glorious Church. What we need, above all things, is the continuous marvel of an elevated Church, ‘^ set on high “by the King, having her home” in the heavenly places in Christ,’’ approaching all things “from above,” and triumphantly resisting the subtle gravitation of ‘’ the world, the flesh, and the devil.’’ It is not only multitudes of decisions that we want, but pre-eminently the heightening of the life of the saved, the glorification of the saints. The great Evangelical Revival began, not with the reclamation of the depraved, but with the enrichment of the redeemed. It was the members of the Holy Club, moving amid the solemnities of grace and sacred fellowship, who were lifted up into the superlative stages of the spiritual life, and who in that transition took a step as great and vital as the earlier step from sin to righteousness. Their life became a high and permanent miracle, and their subsequent ministry was miraculous. That is the most urgent necessity of our day, a Church of the superlative order, immeasurably heightened and enriched — a Church with wings as well as feet, her dimness changed into radiance, her stammering changed into boldness, and presenting to the world the spectacle of a permanent marvel, which will fascinate and allure the inquiring multitude, drawn together “not that they might see Jesus only, but Lazarus also whom He has raised from the dead.”

Now, what is the explanation of the comparative poverty and impotence of our corporate life? Why is the Church not ladened with the impressive dignities of her destined inheritage? Look at the manner of our fellowship. Is it such as to give promise of power and wealth? When we meet together, in worshipping communities, do we look like men and women who are preparing to move amid the amazing and enriching sanctities of the Almighty? Take our very mode of entry. It is possible to lose a thing by the way we approach it. I have seen a body of flippant tourists on the Eigi at the dawn, and by their noisy irreverence they missed the very glory they had come to see. ‘’ When ye come to appear before Me, who hath required this at your hands, to trample My courts?’’ That loud and irreverent tramp is far too obtrusive in our communion. We are not sufiiciently possessed by that spirit of reverence which is the” open sesame ‘’ into the realms of light and grace. We are not subdued into the receptiveness of awe. Nay, it is frequently asserted that in our day awe is an undesirable temper, a relic of an obsolete stage, a remnant of pagan darkness, a fearful bird of a past night, altogether a belated anachronism in the full, sweet light of the evangel of grace. I remember receiving a firm, but very courteous remonstrance from one of the children of light, because on the very threshold of a lovely summer’s morning I had announced the hynm: —

“Lo! Grod is here: let us adore
And own how dreadful is this place.”

And my friend said it was like going back to the cold, gray dawn, when disturbed spirits were speeding to their rest! It was like moving amid the shadows and spectres of Genesis, and he wanted to lie and bask in the calm, sunny noon of the Gospel by John! I think his letter was representative of a common and familiar mood of our time. I have no desire to return to the chill, uncertain hours of the early morning, but I am concerned that we should learn and acquire the only receptive attitude in the presence of our glorious noon. It is certain that many of the popular hymns of our day are very far removed from the hymn to which I have just referred. It is not that these hymns are essentially false, but that they are so one-sided as to throw the truth into disproportion, and so they impair and impoverish our spiritual life. Here is one of the more popular hymns of our time: —

“O that will be glory for me. When by His grace I shall look on Hia face. That will be glory for me!”

Well, we all want to share in the inspiration of the great expectancy! It is a light and lilting song, with very nimble feet: but lest our thought should fashion itself after the style of these tripping strains, we need to hear behind the lilt “the voice of the great Eternal,” sobering our very exuberance into deep and awful joy. “When by His grace I shall look on His face! “That is one aspect of the great outlook, and only one, and therefore incomplete. I find the complementary aspect in these familiar words, ^’ With twain he covered his face!” That is quite another outlook, and it introduces the deepening ministry of awe, which I am afraid is so foreign to the modern mind. ‘’ I feel like singing all the day! “So runs another of our popular hymns. That would have been a congenial song for my friend on that radiant summer morning when his thoughtless minister led him up to the awful splendours of the great white throne! I feel like singing all the day “: and the words suggest that this ought to be the normal mood for all pilgrims on the heavenly way. I am not so sure about that, and I certainly have grave doubts as to whether the man who feels ^’ like singing all the day “will make the best soldier when it comes to” marching as to war.” “The Lord is in His holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before Him.” That is a contemplation which seeks expression in something deeper than song. ‘’ There was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.” What had they seen, what had they heard, what further visions of glory had been unveiled, that speech and song were hushed, and the soul sought fitting refuge in an awe-inspired silence?

When I listen to our loud and irreverent tramp, when I listen to so many of our awe-less hymns and prayers, I cannot but ask whether we have lost those elements from our contemplation which are fitted to subdue the soul into silence, and to deprive it of the clumsy expedient of speech. We leave our places of worship, and no deep and inexpressible wonder sits upon our faces. We can sing these lilting melodies, and when we go out into the streets our faces are one with the faces of those who have left the theatres and the music-halls. There is nothing about us to suggest that we have been looking at anything stupendous and overwhelming. Far back in my boyhood I remember an old saint telling me that after some services he liked to make his way home alone, by quiet by-ways, so that the hush of the Almighty might remain on his awed and prostrate soul. That is the element we are losing, and its loss is one of the measures of our poverty, and the primary secret of our inefficient life and service. And what is the explanation of the loss? Pre-eminently our impoverished conception of God. The popular God is y not great, and will not create a great race. The Church must not expect to strike humanity with startling and persistent impact if she carries in her own mind and heart the enfeebling image of a mean Divinity. Men who are possessed by a powerful God can never themselves be impotent. But have we not robbed the Almighty of much of His awful glory, and to that extent are we not ourselves despoiled? We have contemplated the beauties of the rainbow, but we have overlooked the dim severities of the throne. We have toyed with the light, but we have forgotten the lightning. We have rejoiced in the Fatherhood of our God, but too frequently the Fatherhood we have proclaimed has been throneless and eflFeminate. We have picked and chosen according to the weakness of our own tastes, and not according to the full-orbed revelation of the truth, and we have selected the picturesque and rejected the appalling. ‘’And He had in His right hand seven stars: “— yes, we can accept that delicate suggestion of encircling love and care! ‘’And His countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength: ‘^ — yes, we can bask in the distributed splendour of that sunny morn! “And out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword!’’ — and is that too in our selection, or has our cherished image been deprived of the sword? Why leave out that sword? Does its absence make us more thoughtful and braver men, or does it tend to lull us into an easefulness which removes us far away from the man who, when he saw Him,” fell at His feet as dead ‘^?

This mild, enervating air of our modern Lutheranism needs to be impregnated with something of the bracing salts of Calvinism. Our very Evangelicalism would be all the sturdier by the addition of a little ^’ baptised Stoicism.” Our water has become too soft, and it will no longer make bone for a race of giants. Our Lutheranism has been diluted and weakened by the expulsion of some of the sterner motive-elements which it possessed at its source. If we banish the conceptions which inspire awe, we of necessity devitalise the very doctrines of grace, and if grace is emasculated then faith becomes anaemic, and we take away the very tang and pang from the sense of sin. All the great epistles of the Apostle Paul begin in the awe-inspiring heights of towering mountain-country, and all through the changing applications of his thought these cloud-capped eminences are ever in sight. Paul’s eyes were always lifted up “unto the hills,’’ and therefore his soul was always on its knees. If he rejoiced, it was” with trembling “; if he served the Lord, it was” with fear “; if he was” perfecting holiness,” it was again ‘’ in the fear of the Lord! “Always, I say, this man’s eyes were upon the awful, humbling, and yet inspiring heights of revealed truth. Our modern theological country is too flat; there are not enough cool, uplifted snow-white heights — heights like Lebanon, to which the peasant can turn his feverish eyes even when he is engaged in the labours of the sweltering vale. ‘’ Wilt thou forsake the snows of Lebanon? “^’ His righteousness is like the great mountains!” “Go! stand on the mount before the Lord!” In the year King Uzziah died I saw the Lord, high and lifted up! “” Holy, holy, holy is the Lord.” That was a mountain view. ‘’ And I said, Woe is me! “And that was the consequent awe. If the ministers of the Church were to dwell in those vast uplifted solitudes strange things would happen to us. Our speech would be deepened in content and tone, and we should speak as they say-John Fletcher of Madeley used to speak, “like one who had just left the immediate converse of God and angels,” But not only so, there would be added to our speech the awful energy of a still more powerful silence. ‘^ Every year makes me tremble,” said Bishop Westcott towards the end of his years — ‘’ every year makes me tremble at the daring with which people speak of spiritual things.’’ Is not the good Bishop’s trembling justified? Some time ago I preached a sermon on the bitter cup which was drunk by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. I noticed that one of the papers, in a reference to the sermon, said that I had spoken on the sufferings of Christ ‘’ with charming effect! “The words sent me to my knees in humiliation and fear. Soul of mine, what had I said, or what had I left unsaid, or through what perverting medium had I been interpreted? For the flippancy can be in the reporter as well as in the preacher, it can be in the religious press as well as in the consecrated minister. But let the application stand to me alone, and let me once again remind myself of Westcott’s trembling “at the daring with which people speak of spiritual things.” Ay, we are reckless and therefore forceless in our speech: we are not mighty in our silences. There are some things which our people must infer from our reverent silences, things which can never be told in speech, and these mountain experiences are among them. That awe of the heights will deepen and enlarge both the ministry and the Church, it will enrich both her speech and her silences, and it will make her character unspeakably masculine, forceful, and impressive.” If in any part of Europe a man was required to be burnt, or broken on the wheel, that man was at Geneva, ready to depart, giving thanks

to God, and singing psalms to Him.” A mighty God makes irresistible men. History has proved, and experience confirms it to-day, that this mountainthinking, with all its subduing austerities and shadows, would create a powerful and athletic Church, a Church of most masculine temper, courageous both in its aggressions and in its restraints, both in its confessions and its reserves, a Church that would rouse and impress the world by the decisive vigour of its daily life — never dull, never feeble, but always and everywhere “fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners.” ‘’ 0 Zion, get thee up into the high mountains!”

But our impoverished conception of God is not the only cause of our comparative poverty and enfeeblement. The life of the Church is expressed in two relationships, the human and the Divine. The Divine fellowship has been impoverished by lack of height; the human fellowship has been impoverished by lack of breadth. We have not drunk the iron water from the heart of the mountains, and we have therefore lacked a healthy robustness; we have not accumulated the manifold treasures of the far-stretching plain, and we have therefore lacked a wealthy variety. Our fellowship with God has been mean: our fellowship with man has been scanty. Nay, would it not be just the truth to say that the human aspects of our Church fellowship suggest a treasure-house which has never been unlocked? The Church is poor because much of her treasure is imprisoned; but she herself carries the liberating key to the iron gate! Our riches are buried in the isolated lives of individual members instead of all being pooled for the endowment of the whole fraternity. A very large part of the ample ministry of the kolvojvui has become atrophied, if indeed it has ever been well-sustained. I gratefully recognise the mystic, silent fellowship among the consecrated members of the Church of Christ. I know that out of the very heart of “him that believeth ‘^ there inevitably flow ‘’ rivers of living water,’’ and I delight to allow my imagination to rest upon the well-irrigated country of this sanctified society. There is a mystic commerce altogether independent of human expedient or arrangement. We cannot bow together without some exchange of heavenly merchandise, without angelministries carrying from island to island the unique and peculiar products of their climes. The rich and enriching history of the Society of Friends is altogether corroborative of this great truth of spiritual experience.” When I came into the silent assemblies of God’s people,” says Robert Barclay, “I felt a sweet power among them which touched my heart, and as I gave way unto it, I found the evil weakening in me and the good raised up.’’ But the human side of the apostolic kolvo)vui includes riches other than these. It is not only a mystic interchange in the awful depths of the spirit; it is a fellowship of intelligence, it is a community of experience, it is the socialising of the individual testimony and witness. It is not only the subtle carriage of spiritual energy, it is the transference of visions, the sharing of discoveries, the assemblage of many judgments, whether in the hour of triumph or of defeat. “When ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation.” That is the broader fellowship we lack, and we are all the poorer for it. The psalm that is born in one heart remains unsung, and the sadness it was fitted to remove from the heart of another abides like a clammy mist. The revela- / tion that dawned upon one wondering soul is never ( shared, and so another remains in the cold imprisonment of the darkness. The private interpretation is never given, and for want of the key, many obstructing doors are never unlocked. This is the neglected side of the apostolic fellowship, and for the want of it the Church goes out to confront the world in the poverty of a starved individualism rather than in the rich and full-blooded vigour of her communistic strength. .We are not realising the social basis of the

Church’s life; Christian fellowship comprehends not only a meeting at a common altar, but a meeting at a family hearth, for the reverent and familiar interchange of our experiences with God, and of what has happened to us in our warfare with the world, the flesh, and the devil. In lieu of this broader and richer fellowship we have exalted the ministry of one man, and out of the limited pool of his experiences — and sometimes they are not even experiences, but only fond and desirable assumptions — the whole community has to drink, while the rest of the many pools remain untapped. And oh, the treasures that are hidden in these unshared and unrevealed experiences! What have our matured saints to tell us of the things we wish to know? How did they escape the snare, or by what subtlety were they fatally beguiled? How did they take the hill, and where did they discover the springs of refreshing? What did they find to be the best footgear when the gradient was steep, and how did they comfort their hearts when they dug the grave by the way? And what is it like to grow old, and what delicacies does the Lord of the road provide for aged pilgrims, and have they seen any particular and wonderful stars in their evening sky? Are not all of us unspeakably poorer because these counsels and inspirations are untold? And our younger communicants — how are they faring on the new and arduous road? What unsuspected difficulties are they meeting? And what unsuspected provisions have they received? And what privilege of service has been given them, and what inspiring vision have they found in the task? And what have our stalwart warriors to tell us? How goes the fight in the business fields, on market and exchange? And what hidden secret has the Lord of light been unveiling to the ordained layman? What wealth of truth and glory? I say, these are breadths of the /cotvcovta we do not traverse, these are mines we do not work, and the output of our moral and spiritual energy is consequently small. I know the perils which abound in these particular regions of exercised communion. Those who have the least to saw mav be the readiest to speak. The spiritually insolvent may rise and talk like spiritual millionaires. The bloom of a delicate reserve may be destroyed, and flippant witnessing may become a substitute for deep experience. Easy familiarity may be made the standard of spiritual attainment, and sensational statements may be engendered by the hotbeds of vanity and pride. In a fellowship-meeting some members may speak from a subtle love of applause, while others may speak from an equally illicit sense of shame. I know all this, but I know also that there is nothing in the entire round of Christian worship and communion which is not exposed to abomination and abuse. There is not a single plant in your garden which is not the gathering-ground of some particular pest; ay, and the more delicate and tender the plant, the more multitudinous are the foes. But you do not banish the plant because of the pests; you accept the plant and guard against the pests; and I for one think it not impossible to cultivate this larger, richer, more social and familiar fellowship, and at the same time to create an atmosphere in which these invasive perils shall be unable to breathe. Under God, everything depends upon your leader; and under God, cannot wise leaders be grown? — leaders who shall be able, with a rare delicacy of tact, born of deep and unceasing communion with God, to draw out the individual gift of witness and experience, and by the accumulated treasure to enrich the entire Church. Our Church is comparatively poor and unimpressive; here is a storehouse of untouched resources which I am convinced would immeasurably enrich and strengthen our equipment in

our combined attack against the powers of darkness. We need to get higher up the mountains. And we need, too, to get further out upon the plains. “O, for a closer walk with God!” And ‘’ O, for a closer walk with man I ‘’ Closer to the great and holy God, that we may be possessed by a deepening and fertilising awe; and closer to our brother, that we may move in the manifold inspiration and comfort of ‘^ mutual faith ‘^ and experience.

I have not been concerned with the suggestion of new expedients. It has not been my purpose to advocate or defend aggressive and unfamiliar enterprises. My eyes have not been upon the Church’s conduct, but upon her character: not upon her prospectus, but upon her capital: not upon her plan of campaign, but upon her fighting strength. “Like a mighty army moves the Church of God! ‘^ Yes, but does she? Are not her regiments sometimes almost Falstaffian in their bedraggled impotence? How shall she increase her fighting power? How shall she enrich her spirit of discipline? And I have answered, By taking thought of the untrodden heights and the untrodden breadths within her own circle, by claiming her purposed and buried resources in humanity and in God. I am convinced that in these ways we should make undreamt-of additions to the energy and impact of the Church’s strength, lo Church can walk along these unfrequented paths without acquiring the momenta of sacrificial grace: and when the power of the Church becomes awful and sacrificial, when she bears in her body the red ‘’ marks of the Lord Jesus,’’ when there is ‘’ blood upon the lintel and the two side posts “of her door, you may be assured that the arrested multitude will come together, drawn by the mesmeric gravitation of her own irresistible strength. And not only strong shall the Church become, strong in unselfish daring and persistence, but because of the very robustness of her strength she shall be tender with an exquisitely delicate compassion. I have yielded to none in the advocacy of ‘’ the wooing note ‘^ in the ministry of the word, and with a growing and richer confidence I advocate it still. But there is the wooing note of a silly, simpering sentimentalism, and there is the wooing note of strong and masculine men who have been cradled and moulded and homed in the austere nursery and school of the mountains. And where can you make your fine wooers if not among the deepening ministries of the mountains?” How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of them that bring glad tidings! ‘’ I shall have no fear about the strength and sweetness of the wooing note when we are all the children of the heights.

Given these conditions, and I believe the Church will move among the alienated multitudes with an illumined and fascinating constraint. The alienation of the people is not fundamental and ultimate. Deep down, beneath all the visible severances, there are living chords of kinship, ready to thrill and to respond to the royal note. Those living chords — buried if you will beneath the dead and deadening crust of formality and sin, buried, but buried alive — are to be found in Belgravia, where Henry Drummond, that man of the high mountains and the broad plains, awoke them to response by the strong, tender impact of a great evangel and a great experience. And those living chords are also to be found at the pit’s mouth, among the crooked and pathetic miners, and they become vibrant with responsive devotion, as Keir Hardie has told us that his became vibrant, in answer to the awakening sweep of the strong, tender hands of the Nazarene. The multitude is not sick of Jesus; it is only sick of His feeble and bloodless representatives. When once again a great Church appears, a Church with the Lord’s name in her forehead, a Church with fine muscular limbs and face seamed with the marks of sacrifice, the multitude will turn their feet to the way of God’s commandments. I sat a little while ago in one of the chambers of the National Gallery, and my attention was caught by the vast miscellaneous crowd as it sauntered and galloped through the rooms. All sorts and conditions of people passed by — rich and poor, the well-dressed and the beggarly, students and artisans, soldiers and sailors, maidens just out of school and women bowed and wrinkled in age: but, whoever they were, and however unarresting may have been all the other pictures in the chamber, every single soul in that mortal crowd stopped dead and silent before a picture of our Saviour bearing His cross to the hill. And when the Church is seen to be His body — His very body: His lips. His eyes. His ears, His hands, His feet, His brain. His heart: His very body — and when the Church repeats, in this her corporate life, the brave and manifold doings of Judsea and Galilee, she too shall awe the multitude, and by God’s grace she shall convert the pregnant wonder into deep and grateful devotion.

Our times are disturbed, and hopefully and fruitfully disturbed, by vast and stupendous problems. On every side the latch is lifting, and the door of opportunity stands ajar. But we shall fail in our day, as other men have failed in their day, unless by faith and experience we enter into “the fellowship of His suflFerings/^ and become clothed with” the power of His resurrection,” Sound social economics are not enough; sound political principles are not enough; sound creeds and politics are not enough. The most robust and muscular principle will faint and grow weary unless it is allied with character which is rendered unique and irresistible by unbroken communion with the mind and will of God. It is ‘’ Christ in us” which is ‘’ the hope of glory /^ both for the individual and the State.

Let us abide in Him in total and glorious self-abandonment. Let nothing move us from our rootage. Let us “pray without ceasing,” and let our consecration be so complete and confident that there may be presented unto the world a Church “alive unto God ‘’; a Church as abounding in signs of vitality as hedgerows in the spring; a Church quickened in moral vision, in intellectual perception, in emotional discernment; a Church acute, compassionate and daring, moving amid the changing circumstances of men in the very spirit of her Lord, and presenting everywhere the arresting ministry of” a hiding-place from the wind, a covert from the tempest, rivers of water in a dry place, and the shadow of a great rock in a weary land! ‘’